My background, just for a minute, has been in shipping and trading since the year 1985. I moved to Canada in 1994. In terms of past exports, I did some trading in commodities, exporting yellow peas to India from here, tying in with the farmers and exporters out of Saskatchewan. I had two successful years until, of course, we could not match the pricing because of the increase in exports out of Australia. We opted out of pulse trading and got into the construction sector.
Having said that, I am very much experienced in doing business with India, having moved to Dubai in 1990. Our offices in India were functioning then. We even have offices in Bombay today, but are more involved in construction systems and the export of our construction business into India. Having established in India in 2001 after the earthquake in Gujarat, we joined the Canadian delegation to introduce light gauge steel construction systems, which were earthquake resistant. The country had a shortfall of in excess of 26 million homes and was in dire need of such a system.
From 2001 to today, we have had sort of an uphill battle there to establish ourselves the way we want to. It's been quite tough, but at the same time, the market is so huge and inviting, we know that one day or another, and sooner rather than later, we will be able to make a breakthrough. Of course the experience that we've carried with us for the last 10 years will play a major role in doing so.
I am ready to answer questions, but when it comes to the CEPA, yes, we definitely are of the opinion that this is a very important trade agreement that primarily Canada would like to benefit from, and so would India. But of course India has an advantage, being such a hugely populated country. As one of the largest growing economies in the world, it has many nations fighting to take a primary step forward in tying in with the country.
Having said that, I think the latest efforts from our Prime Minister Harper and of course Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to negotiate a trade agreement is primarily to the benefit of Canadian companies and also the Indian companies that want to trade with Canada—primarily in the mining sector, as I've been told.
Coming back to our primary business, yes, it's the export of construction systems. We are exporting light gauge steel systems, modular buildings, and prefabricated systems.
India comes with a background of bricks and mortar. For centuries the population has only experienced living in systems of bricks and mortar, which is nothing but bricks and concrete. In rural India there are more mud houses than even brick houses.
Having said that, the country had a shortfall of about 20 million homes when we entered the Indian market in 2001. The shortfall has now grown to 26 million homes, with urban and rural India combined. Urban India alone has a requirement for 18.6 million homes, of which 15.2 million homes are for the economically weaker section of the society—that is, the population living below the poverty line. This encompasses the slum rehabilitation sectors of the country and of urban India.
When we entered India in 2001, it was primarily to provide earthquake-resistant homes for states like Gujurat, where there had been a major earthquake, and other states that were in zone 4 and 5 earthquake regions. Gradually from there we diverted into the needs of India's slum rehabilitation business, where slum rehabilitation in Bombay alone was a major challenge for the MHADA, which is Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority. Bombay alone, which has an unofficially declared population of over 21 million, has about 8 million officially declared people living in slums, which are known countrywide as shanties.
It is a challenge, because when we tied up with an NGO, a non-government organization, headed by an Austrian citizen in Bombay in 2004, we took the challenge of rehabilitating about 1,800 families living in a place called Wadala in Bombay. This was in 2004. I even invited CIDA, which had supported many an international group entering the Indian market. The Canadian International Development Agency supported us for market entry in 2002 and then the implementation process in 2004, which enabled us to tie up with a group called Tata Steel, a subsidiary of the Tata group, India's largest steel producer.
When we had a strategic alliance partnership signed in 2004, our focus was mainly to see how we could best involve the light gauge steel system—a quick-build prefabricated system—in the slum rehabilitation requirements of Bombay. We did model homes. We even had CIDA look at the land we were planning to redevelop, which was, as I said, slum rehabilitation. It was not a real estate business, it was more of a government-initiated program where, based on the rates in our proposal, they would give us that particular land where xnumber of families needed to be rehabilitated in the overall designs. The floor area meant for a family of two was 320 square feet, and a family of four had a minimum requirement of 450 square feet, which we had to provide.
When we did the survey in 2004, there were about 1,850 families living in this particular 20.2 acre lot in Wadala, Bombay. By the time we had the proposal moving forward in 2006, we were ordered to take a new survey, which showed that 600 more families had come in. The families would prove that they had been there before 1995 by forging a certificate through government sources to get approval from the authorities that they had been inhabitants there.
These were the challenges that we were facing. Though it would be quite an attractive project, it was capital intensive. We had financial support from some institutions—India's institutions as well as foreign institutions through support of this type of a venture—but the challenges we had to face were to get the approval, which was a lengthy process, and then when we did get those approval processes in the pipeline, there would be a re-survey ordered, and that would change the complete scenario.
This is a brief background of Minaean's efforts until 2006 in the housing sector of India, primarily in the state of Maharashtra and Bombay.
Many of you must be aware that practically half of Bombay is occupied by slum dwellers.
So that was 2006. In 2007 we introduced our modular buildings. We got involved with Shell Petroleum to construct retail shop buildings for their gas stations. They had a licence to put up 2,000 gas stations; we were exclusive suppliers of modular buildings for them. We put up three plants, two in Bombay and one in Bangalore, to produce these modular buildings and supply these buildings to Shell for their various locations.
This was a novelty for India then, because prefabricated modular buildings had not yet entered the market. Though they're widely used here in North America as well as in Australia, in India they were a novelty. That would have been a change even for the government authorities in accepting a new system, which was light gauge steel covered with the drywalling that we use here in North America.
Again, then came the recession. Shell had to cut back on the country's needs. We are now getting back on track by tying up, with a memorandum of understanding, with the Gujarat government and the National Thermal Power Corporation plant.
These are Minaean's achievements as of date. But, as I stated, the whole process is an uphill battle. We need support from the Canadian government. We are of a strong belief that the CEPA will enable that, because export of designs and architecture, as well as the export of certain materials from Canada to India, which attract duties and tariffs.... It will provide a benefit to us to be more competitive in the country.